Fortnum & Mason’s Cookery Writer of the Year 2014 continues her oven odyssey.
This week: Toad in the hole

Baked suppers are a theme the club rarely indulges in, so busy are we perfecting breads and great cake. But I have, over the soggy days of this early summer, thought about comfort – and ovens. New season’s greens, no matter that they come just once a year, seem less tempting than something creamy or crisp that bubbles in the oven.

As a collector of trivia that may I hope one day turn up as a quiz-night question (the glory… the admiration…), I have found an obscurity connected to baked dishes. A gratin, I always believed, was a dish of creamy something, like sliced potatoes, baked in a hot oven to crisp up the surface. This is true, but the origin of the word is better.

The French word for scrape is gratter, so the name of the dish refers not to the cooking method but the delight in scrabbling at the bits that stick to the dish, once you have eaten the contents. Think of those lovely golden, crispy bits of mash, clinging to the sides of a dish of shepherd’s pie; or the stubborn-to-claw, rich bits of cheese and béchamel at the edge of a lasagne – surely the true ceiling of happiness eating?

Comforted by these thoughts, I have just finished a book that inspired the devotion to toad in the hole this week. Wild Wood is Jan Needle’s reimagining of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, first published in 1981 and recently reissued. Told from the point of view of the disgruntled weasels, stoats and ferrets shown as vermin in the original, the back story behind the invasion of Toad Hall is narrated by a ferret, Baxter.

Working-class to the roots of the burrow where he and his humble family live, Baxter is a mechanic (you can see where this is going with Mr Toad) and a gourmand. The conjuring up of Christmas feasts, baking and home brewing becomes so believable I do not think I will ever again walk through the woods without sniffing the air for the scent of baking bread. Without giving the plot away, the very end of Wild Wood reveals Baxter’s mother’s recipe for toad in the hole, or Daisy’s toad.

Having unravelled the spelling (Daisy is appalling) and agreed how much nicer a TITH is with ale added to the batter, comfort of an even greater kind than a gratin has been delivered. The way this summer is going, the bikini will be staying in the drawer anyway, so do take Daisy’s advice while the TITH cooks: “Dispose extraneous beer down throat.”

Serves 6

Equipment

20cm x 30cm/8in x 12in non-stick pan

Ingredients

12 plain pork sausages

1 tbsp lard or dripping

A handful of sage leaves

For the batter

240g/8 oz strong white flour

A pinch of salt

3 eggs

200ml/7fl oz whole milk – approximately

300ml/10 ½ fl oz ale

Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas 7. Heat a pan and lightly brown the sausages.

Put the flour and salt in a big bowl, make a well in the centre and add the eggs. Using a whisk to stir, gradually add enough of the milk to make a thick paste, then add the ale or beer. The batter should have the consistency of single cream. Allow the mixture to sit for 20 minutes for the gluten to develop, which will help the batter to rise in the oven.

Rub a little dripping on to the base and sides of the tin. Add a thin layer of the batter and place in the oven to set – about three minutes. Take the pan out of the oven and place the sausages on the set batter. Pour in the remaining batter, being careful to pour around and not over the sausages. Scatter over the sage leaves and bake for about 45 minutes, until it is well puffed up. Serve immediately.

Your letters

What is the difference in quality between sea salt and table salt, asks Bryony Dean. “It’s confusing but do chefs use sea salt because it tastes better, if that is possible, or because it is eco-friendly?” There is a snob factor to salt, and I am dubious about the flavour aspect. The food writer Jeffrey Steingarten once lab-tested a number of chic salts against plain old table and found no taste difference in any but one practically unobtainable Japanese variety. There is an environmental benefit to sea salt, in terms of the way that it is produced. I suspect the chefs still believe sea salt to have a better flavour – so let them. As for me, I am delighted by the appearance of sea salt and agree with Steingarten that it is the way you find the large crystals in your mouth when it is sprinkled on the food that makes it more pleasant, and not the taste. In breadmaking, sea salt seems a more natural if rather more pricey ingredient to use.